1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to distributed data processing systems and in particular to operating systems within distributed data processing systems associated with virtual input/output servers and client logical partitions. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method, data processing system and computer program product that creates and/or replaces operating systems within one or more client logical partitions of distributed data processing systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Virtualized data processing system configuration, which provides the virtualization of processor, memory and operating system (OS) resources are becoming more and more common in the computer (and particularly the computer server) industry. To a lesser extent, storage virtualization is also known and provided in various environments. However, within the virtualization computing environment, storage virtualization and management is implemented as a separate virtualization model from server virtualization and management. As such, different client logical partitions (LPARs) associated with different virtualized server systems may execute one or more operating systems that need to be upgraded and/or replaced. In the past however, each client LPARs are shutdown, the OS of the client logical partition (LPAR) is upgraded or replaced, and the client LPAR is booted or started after the OS of the client LPAR is upgraded or replaced.